


Resignation

by lavwings



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22987339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavwings/pseuds/lavwings
Summary: An unsatisfactory glimpse into Isa / how recovery from poor emotional situations doesn't always go so well.Just a blurb because I don't want to turn this into a whole thing.
Relationships: Isa/Lea (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	Resignation

Xemnas walks in on what Saix considers to be his office, once. Among the various mission reports yet to be properly filled out by Demyx, and successes reported by Axel and Roxas, sits a pair of scissors that Xemnas neither remembers supplying, nor has seen on the desk before.  
  
He knows, because he always knows. They discuss the failure of Castle Oblivion’s deceased, and before he leaves, Xemnas grasps one of the long strands of cerulean between his fingers, in contemplation. Saix finds himself trying to compensate before his leader even speaks.  
  
“It grows too quickly. It was unmanageable before I realized it-”  
  
Xemnas lifts his free hand, silencing him immediately.  
  
“Leave it. It suits you.”  
  
And so the decision is no longer Saix’s to make. He falls silent, and affirms with only a nod. Xemnas leaves with the scissors.

\---

They find him before he can even truly register that he’s been reborn, after their defeat in the World That Never Was. They drag him, half-conscious and barely able to place faces that wore their trademark coat but he had never seen before, back to the Keyblade Graveyard, where there is a _new_ leader who is the same as he ever was, but who wears a different face.  
  
In brimstone and pain, he is made a Nobody again, because of his loyalty until the end of his last incarnation. Isa is gone before he is really Isa, and Saix is faced with the fact his body is even further from his own when he feels that shard of Xehanort’s darkness strike deep in his chest, where his heart had beaten no more than a handful of times before he was taken again.  
  
From the moment he reawakens as a nobody, he thinks no more of his individuality as a person, because he is simply one of many again, and none of them are any more than the old man’s shades anymore.

\---

He has been Isa again for two months, after his second death, when the thought to trim the length of his hair comes again to the back of his mind.  
  
There is a brief freedom in the consideration. Xemnas and Xehanort both gone, he thinks that his body is his own, and it’s with a conviction that he gets up one morning with the intent to go to the local shop in Twilight Town, not far off from the half-shabby apartment he and Lea had went in on renting together, no longer feeling welcome in the Radiant Garden.

Lea wakes up while he’s brushing his teeth, and wraps lanky arms around him while asking why Isa’s getting ready so early.  
  
“I’m going to get a haircut,” Isa announces, managing to hide the swell of confidence that rises in his chest at the thought. It's such a silly, little thing, and he doesn't want Lea to tease him for how big of a step Isa felt it was to take.  
  
He doesn’t expect Lea’s reflection in the mirror to pout, and bury half asleep in yet-tamed strands of blue.  
  
“But I like your hair,” Lea murmurs in that way that he knows sends shivers down Isa’s neck, right against the curve of his ear.  
  
It throws him for a loop, because there are few things that Isa holds so dearly now as he does Lea’s opinion. His good graces. His admiration. The sliver of freedom he’d felt in his decision that morning slides from him like water through cupped fingers, but Lea’s too tired to notice the subtle falter in his boyfriend’s good mood.  
  
“...I see,” he answers, at length, right as Lea yawns into the back of his shoulder. Isa weighs the ups and downs of pressing the subject, but so fresh in this new life after so long of skulking around the wrong side, he doesn’t wish to think about Lea’s disappointment. He still counts himself lucky to have earned his forgiveness, much less the position at his _side._

Lea, for all of his skills in memory, has a few less in observation. He misses the subtle way Isa’s gaze drops in the mirror as he sets his toothbrush aside, consigning himself to the fact, maybe, that this will _never_ be his decision.  
  
“Why don’t we go out for breakfast, instead?” Isa offers, reminded of how much having a heart could be an inconvenience.


End file.
